


ripeness can’t stop itself

by thyrsus7



Category: xxxHoLic
Genre: M/M, local exorcist and seer campaign against scurvy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-14 01:44:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16903749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thyrsus7/pseuds/thyrsus7
Summary: Watanuki and Doumeki dream of tangerines.





	ripeness can’t stop itself

**Author's Note:**

> unbetad u.u title is taken from the poem tangerine by ruth l. schwartz. last night i was sitting in my room in the dark [this gorgeous song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOcdyK9oXkM) eating the most delicious tangerine of my life and i got this idea and banged this out in a hour. i wish rei would rise from the dead and have some scene with doumeki and watanuki in a dream, or any scene where they're forced to acknowledge each other with honesty. but til then i suppose it doesnt hurt to....wait for it. dream........................

Above was an unnaturally lilac night sky, like the cloth of stars had been taken out of a celestial vat of indigo dye much too soon. Watanuki blinked at the uncertain phantom moon flickering in and out of view as pearlescent clouds rushed past, apparently still deciding whether or not it wanted to be there. On the periphery of his vision he could see endless vegetation surrounding him and, clothing him, a _yukata_ he had never seen before of soft pink-orange patterned with swirling maroon camellias. 

Watanuki rose and found that a single giant ginkgo tree stood nearby, a grand break in the infinity of verdant grass. The oddly bright night revealed the broad shoulder, clad in deep blue linen, and the noble curve of a cheekbone and jaw of someone sitting against trunk- _Haruka-san?_

His friend had never once before visited him in the special dreams he had, the ones more real than reality at times, as his grandfather often did. Though both grandfather and grandson looked identical as young men, Watanuki could somehow intuit that the man gazing at the moon was the one familiar to him in the waking world just by looking at his hand. _Is it really that idiot..._

With a humorless chuckle, Watanuki suspended his wishful thinking of the dead man being his company for the night (the elder Doumeki was easy to talk to and, more importantly, did not rivet him with a strange panic that was more frightening for its unexplained undercurrent of giddiness). 

It would have been ironic if he couldn’t identify by sight the one that had given him an eye. 

Watanuki approached. The glistening mist had wetted the grass; it felt cold and lovely on his bare feet. “You already follow me around all day, are you gonna stalk me in my dreams too?” 

Doumeki turned, his face its usual calm to the untrained observer. But Watanuki could divine something else from the slight raising of his brow, his bright eyes: Doumeki was pleasantly surprised, happy. _Happy to see me._

There was that feeling again, it rumbled down his spine and brought with it an ominous pleasure. Doumeki kept his eyes on Watanuki as he approached. Watanuki caught his gaze and Doumeki turned away immediately, face too stone-like to not be hiding something. And Watanuki knew what. Half of him wanted to grin and sigh in elation; the rest wanted to sprint impossibly far. _Shit._

_Happy to see me._

Maturity had soothed Watanuki’s tendency to launch himself into his emotions headfirst, diluted his temper and dangerous capacity for unthinking passion. Head and heart collaborated more efficiently. With this came a new awareness that supplanted his adolescent plague of black and white judgment.

It had led him to learn many new things about himself, those he had met in and because of the shop, of people.

It had also allowed Watanuki to see that his friend was pathetically in love with him.

The realization terrified and deeply confused Watanuki, yes, but it also haunted him with a mysterious excitement. He was still adjusting to finally having accepted their deep friendship for what it was when he _noticed_. Borrowing from his younger days when he tried to convince himself of their pseudo-rivalry, Watanuki coped by trying his hardest to ignore the signs of Doumeki’s causally undying devotion and fiercely intense affection for him. It scared him to be loved so absolutely when he had long eschewed closeness after seeing what fates waited for those who wrapped up their hearts in him. 

But whenever he _saw_ , when Watanuki couldn't help but perceive Doumeki calmly giving him all the space under a shared umbrella and getting soaked because he apparently couldn’t allow Watanuki’s shoulder to catch the spray, when he ate his cooking like it was ambroisa because, as Haruka had said, it was the essence of the cook Doumeki craved more than the food itself, it was heavenly fire swamping his veins. Doumeki’s feelings for him were like the silhouette of some enormous, unknown sea creature witnessed from a ship, scaring the hell out of the sailors not for fear of the monster hurting them, for it never would, but because they somehow knew that to regard it in the light would mean to never be able to look away again. 

There was a soft weight in Watanuki’s hand he hadn’t realized was there. His fingers unfurled and revealed a tangerine. 

“Those are out of season.”

“Given that you ask me to cook you out-of-season dishes all the time, I’m surprised you know that.”

“Where did you get it?”

Watanuki looked around at the landscape that stretched into oblivion, and then peered at the orange sphere, a miniature sun that was starkly bright and out of place in the glimmering hushed colors of the dream. 

“I guess I had it since I arrived in this dream.”

They both contemplated the tangerine in silence, and then: “I’m hungry.”

Watanuki met Doumeki’s blank gaze with a glare.

“Of course you are. If anyone would get hungry in a dream, it’s you.” But there was no truthfulness to the jab, and he was already stepping forward to hold the tangerine out to the sitting Doumeki like a knight with a rose for a maiden.

“You can have half but you gotta peel it.”

“Ok.”

The peel was being chipped away and left to stand out in the dusky grass as a fiery blemish. Watanuki inhaled the bright scent cutting through the soil-perfumed wind and slowly laid down on his back. A pristine sense of peace crashed into him then and he allowed himself to smile.

Watanuki watched the branches twist above him, and beyond that the dream-stars strain under their own ancient brilliance. He met Doumeki’s hand halfway as he passed him tangerine slices, slowly fed himself. 

A bird called to no answer at some point to his side, but when Watanuki turned to look all he could find was Doumeki. 

He was staring into the moon but perceiving more. There was a vision projected onto the alabaster surface, its contents Watanuki had a good guess of. 

Watanuki stared even though, in the waking world, the sight of Doumeki’s stoic face color subtly with longing and warmth, detectable only by those who had a closeness to him identifiable as love, would have made him jerk away under the pain of lovely arrows.

But the serenity of the dreamscape, calm like a void, soothed Watanuki enough for his long-held curiosity of his friend to triumph. He continued to observe while enjoying the fruit he was given. _I think this is the best tangerine I’ve ever had,_ Watanuki thought distantly, still staring. 

And then he realized that Doumeki hadn’t been eating the fruit all along. He would hand Watanuki a slice, hear for a swallow, and hand him another, eyes latched on the moon all the while.

Realization fractured and buzzed Watanuki’s body, he felt strangled by a sudden euphoric fatalism, his eyes grew wild-wide and the click of his nervous swallow clanged in his head. 

It was the final blow to any denial Watanuki was capable of, as gentle and quiet and unintentional as the breath of a child committing a soap bubble into nothingness.

In the waking world, Watanuki would have somehow escaped, found the comforting arms of his own cowardice.

But they were in a dream, the domain of honesty, of revelation. 

Watanuki steeled himself, and then spoke. 

“Doumeki.” 

“Hn?”

Watanuki’s ribs were bruised by his own thumping heart. Nervous sweat tickled his underarms.

“I thought you wanted half of the tangerine.”

Doumeki said nothing, just waited curiously for Watanuki to go on. Watanuki just waited for the earth to crumble beneath him and instead faintly realized that Doumeki was beautiful, that he had always found him so. 

“You said you were hungry but you’re giving it all to me,” he explained with a sense of insanity. 

Watanuki watched with tautly frantic suspense as Doumeki shrugged, flitted his eyes to some nondescript point in the endless plain. “I changed my mind,” he said with a faint smile, as if amused by his own false excuse. So very casual, not at all like right next to him Watanuki’s world was simultaneously being destroyed and reformed.

The lie pushed an exhilarated breath out of Watanuki. Shakily, he sat up and watched how the increased directness of his stare made Doumeki react as if he felt it on his skin. _Even if I just look at him, look what it does-he, he wanted to give me the whole tangerine without me knowing, he-_ Watanuki felt condemned and hypnotized, lightyears past crazy. He felt- 

_Amazing. He’s…amazing._

“You love me, don't you?”

Doumeki didn’t say anything, just turned his head, slow and stunned as if roused from a meditative trance, his shocked face suddenly bare and vulnerable, caught.

But Watanuki didn’t need an answer, at least not until he could say it back. Words could do for when they awoke. Something Yuko once told him came in handy: 

_Dreams are for symbols. ___

__Doumeki opened his mouth to speak and didn’t. Being a virtuoso of silence, he seemed to know too that, despite Watanuki’s question (which was redundant, they both knew he knew the answer) they were in a space of gestures, of poetic communication._ _

__Watanuki gently lifted the remaining slices of the tangerine from Doumeki’s hand, wet and scented with citrus, and removed a section._ _

__“You have some too.” He whispered it without meaning to._ _

__He was just as amazed at his actions as Doumeki was, two sets of eyes following the movement of his hand in dumb wonderment. He lifted it slowly, the movement seeming to be heavy with all the importance and grave solemnity and meaning of an executioner raising his sword._ _

__But there was no blood, only the juice released when Doumeki bit down. It crept into Watanuki’s palm and stayed there until it became too heavy with itself, ran down the skin beneath his sleeve like a secret touch. And there was the saliva too, left from when he drew back and his fingers brushed the inside of lips. Doumeki's eyes were closed as he swallowed and Watanuki touched his cheek._ _

__The tangerine was gently taken from him. A breeze materialized like an epiphany and Watanuki’s hand and mouth felt the cold brush of air where the tangerine had dampened them. He imagined Doumeki felt the same coolness._ _

__He bit down on the fruit placed on his mouth, swallowed. His eyes fluttered shut as he felt fingers glide slow against his tongue and teeth, reluctant to leave. Then they opened real wide, blue and a gift of gold, took in the moon that had become solid and absolute, its light electric milk, so bright you would think it had joined in a pointless contest against the sun. Above them, the tree reveled in it’s own jewel-like leaves with the passing of wind. Around them, the long grass swirled, whispered in the language of deep-green blades. And before them was the other, bright and waiting to complete the ritual._ _

__There was one tangerine slice left. Watanuki put it into Doumeki’s mouth, holding it there. The dream, this place, the way his friend was irrevocably transfixed by him, and transfixed him in return, it filled Watanuki with something blissful and light, air that had passed the lungs of a goddess. He felt like a kite buoyed by a gale, ready to disappear happily into the impossible blue._ _

__He bit onto the other end of the fruit. Their hands reached out and touched. Their juice-damp fingers slid against each other and then held tight, as if they could keep the dream in place and fulfill their mutual desire to will the moment into forever. They bit into the tangerine and then into each other, held with a desperation that pierced through the dream with it’s earnestness-_ _

__-And Watanuki woke; gasping in a way that suggested elation, not fear. His heartbeat sang in his entire body. He turned his face towards the morning light. There was sweetness in his mouth. His bedroom smelled of an orchard. Strewn on his windowsill was the vibrant peel of a tangerine._ _

__He would be bringing fruit to the temple that day._ _


End file.
